[LINK] Indonesia Overtaking Australia with Wireless Internet

[Richard Chirgwin]

On 3/06/11 1:14 PM, grove at zeta.org.au wrote:
> On Fri, 3 Jun 2011, Tom Worthington wrote:
>
>> Greetings from the famous room N101 at the at the Australian National
>> University, where Dr Idris Sulaiman is speaking on "ICT-enablement in
>> Environmental Social Movements in Indonesia":
>> <http://cecs.anu.edu.au/seminars/more/SID/2879>.
>
>> Dr Sulaiman describes Indonesia as a 'near-networked' nation. He argues
>> that argues that ICT-enablement is now having a significant effect and
>> that such developing nations with smart phones are bypassing development
>> steps of western nations. The use of smart phones in Jakarta now exceeds
>> that of Sydney. With more applications becoming available for smart
>> phones and tablet computers, this may see developing nations in a better
>> position to exploit the technology and take the lead globally in the
>> information economy.
>>
>> This has significant implications for Australia, which has invested $43B
>> in a nationalised fibre optic National Broadband Network. It may be that
>> Indoenisa's free market wireless approach turns out to have been the
>> better option. If most consumers and small businesses access the
>> Internet via a hand held wireless device, then the rationale for the NBN
>> evaporates. However, as Dr Sulaiman  pointed out the wireless has
>> capacity limitations and in Indonesia (and Australia to a lesser extent)
>>   latency and daily peak period cause problems. But these are likely to
>> be acceptable for casual personal use but not for business.
> I am hoping this conference won't be used to once again bang on about the
> NBN and the wisdom in not doing it.   It's not $43Bn anymore, either
> but apparently will be a bit less.   I wonder if wireless is more
> suitable for Indonesia given the geology of the area, its concentrated
> (and dispersed) population centres and that wireless is a lot more easy
> to spy on in an ad-hoc method than other technologies?   I actually do not
> consider Indonesia to be a good comparison to Australia for networked
> technologies as there are many cultural and geographical differences
> between the two....
>
>
> rachel
>
Rachel,

Wireless is also much easier to deploy if you have inadequate fixed 
infrastructure to start with.

Like you, I'm sick of the stuff-the-physics wireless envy that gets 
trotted out at the drop of a hat.

Tom, if most consumers and businesses accessed the Internet via 
wireless, our access would be horrible. Even here, at the moment on 3G a 
few hundred metres from the Mount Bodington base station, latency is 
more than 100 milliseconds at best, speed is anything down to 50 KILO 
bits per second - not Meg - and access is expensive.

Carriers are, even with Australia's light population, so 
spectrum-starved they're happy to say "get lost" to emergency services.

The idea that wireless is a viable replacement for all fixed services is 
deranged.

RC